Unpretentious movie reviews you can read in less than 10 minutes

Its erratic plot, overkill effects, thin characters, and a laughable character arc messes everything up, no matter how enjoyable it tries to be.

Like Thor, the movie has two different time lines. On earth there’s reckless irresponsible Hal Jordan troubled by his daddy issues. He then receives a ring from a purple dying alien who happens to be a member of an elite outer space police called The Green Lantern Corps, and becomes the new recruit.

In an opposite turn of fate, Hector gets infected when examining the alien’s body and develops a power of his own. In outer space Parallax escapes, roams around for 6 months and finally pings the Corps radar after wreaking havoc in the universe. Sinestro spearheads the mission to defeat the menace but his efforts proved to be useless (even though Green Lanterns were supposedly fearless), learning the truth about what Parallax really is in the process. In the end, its up to Hal to man up and save the universe.

The movie jumps between these two time lines haphazardly. The characters move the story along but they aren’t well written, resulting into Hal’s forgettable transformation and super powered self actualization.

Ryan and Blake have no chemistry at all. Ryan Reynolds tries his best to be the troubled guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders but he’s not convincing. Much less convincing is the supposed super villain Parallax, who looks more like an octopus looking mass of soot clouds than a monster. I couldn’t take Hal seriously, especially when he needed this advice from Ms. Captain Obvious love interest Carol – courage can overcome fear. As Green Lantern he can make anything out of his own will yet he comes up with mundane tricks.

I know that this is a comic book movie not Shakespeare. Ryan Reynolds and Peter Sarsgaard were good at what they do best (Hal was charming and funny, Hector was a creepy dweeb turned malevolent disfigured villain), the scenes from outer space looked great and Mark Strong was unrecognizable as Sinestro. But even mindless entertaining summer movies have a worthy villain and a consistent plot no matter how ridiculous it is.

Kids will be amused and if you have low expectations you’ll probably enjoy it. As for me, Thor was better.